It is known that an electronic card includes constituent elements such as electronic components, ports, supply elements and connection means.
Many items of equipment, both domestic and industrial, comprise one or more electronic cards of this type. Such items of equipment are generally fabricated during a known particular industrial cycle. During this industrial cycle, it is frequently the case that modifications have to be made to the diagram of one or more electronic cards of the item of equipment. These modifications may be involved in several steps of the industrial cycle, especially after tests of a prototype card, during integration into the item of equipment, after tests of a prototype item of equipment, or during changes to the item of equipment in mass production phase.
When modifications have to be made to an electronic card, it is necessary to regenerate industrial data or definition or qualification justification elements, starting from an initial step of acquisition of the diagram illustrating the electronic card. Since the exhaustive testing of an electronic card, and a fortiori an item of equipment that includes at least one such card, is a lengthy and complex operation, the test subsequent to one or more modifications of an electronic card relate in general only to the modified portions of said card. In addition, it is necessary to know how to determine in a precise manner the modifications that have been made to this card since the previous tests.
One solution for determining the modifications made to an electronic card consists in manually noting the modifications as and when an operator modifies the diagram by means of a CAD (Computer-Aided Design) software program. However, this solution has the drawback of there being a not insignificant risk of errors which may in particular be due to omissions by said operator.
Another solution consists in visually comparing the old diagram with the new diagram once the latter has been completed and in noting the differences seen by an operator. Here again, the risk of errors or of omissions is not insignificant, especially if the diagram is complex.